Well they aren't capsules. They are upper stages. Yes someday they may carry humans but that is likely a long way off. The starship will also be used for launching payloads into orbit.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that speed isn't the sole metric. Site A can build one starship per month. Site B can build two a month but 90% of the blow up before making orbit. Lets close down site A and go full speed ahead with Site B

Given the ambition, I hope the Starship is being built as an airframe only - and then general guidance as to how the internals should be balanced. In the same way that a 747 can be arranged in multiple ways internally but these being barely noticeable externally. We have to commoditise space as much as possible to allow increased flexibility.

Given the ambition, I hope the Starship is being built as an airframe only - and then general guidance as to how the internals should be balanced. In the same way that a 747 can be arranged in multiple ways internally but these being barely noticeable externally. We have to commoditise space as much as possible to allow increased flexibility.

Or am I talking incontinent rubbish and entirely missing something?

A bit of both. Crew starship will presumably have a passenger compartment in the area cargo starship carries payload, and rich tourists will presumably get a different layout from initial mars colonists (a lot of space used for cargo), which in turn will differ from later colonization craft which are just people. Those bits can be airframed. Dedicated tanker starship is planned to chop off the nose cone area where cargo/passengers will be carried for a much shorter fairing and lower weight. The expendable cargo starship Elon appeared to napkin math out on Twitter a month or two back was even more heavily cut down.

I've reached the stage where I think SpaceX deserves a fair bit of credit for what they have achieved. I'd like to think that rather than some cutthroat competition, this is more collaborative and trying to take advantage of everyone's good ideas, rather than some insights getting overlooked as the team pushes forward with a single vision. It could literally just be a way of speeding up testing, making use of talent based in 2 different locations.

Meanwhile, tonight SpaceX is (hopefully) about to launch 60 satellites as part of the first real push towards Starlink. Can't fault them for not being busy.

I can't help but be excited by every new Starship update. They are moving at incredible speed, and are so far seemingly living up to Musk's timeline. It sounds like we will have a flying Starship to watch over the Memorial Day holiday!

They are not A/B testing hardware design. Both sites are building the same design. They are simply using 2 separate fabrication crews to define best practices for fabrication of the rocket body and tanks. It is not a race, the winner will not be determined by who finishes first. As has been stated by EM repeatedly, they will be building Starships at both locations. This method allows them to work out the details of best fabrication techniques, and I'm sure both sites will eventually be using nearly identical processes once they get some experience with what works best.

Given the ambition, I hope the Starship is being built as an airframe only - and then general guidance as to how the internals should be balanced. In the same way that a 747 can be arranged in multiple ways internally but these being barely noticeable externally. We have to commoditise space as much as possible to allow increased flexibility.

Given the ambition, I hope the Starship is being built as an airframe only - and then general guidance as to how the internals should be balanced. In the same way that a 747 can be arranged in multiple ways internally but these being barely noticeable externally. We have to commoditise space as much as possible to allow increased flexibility.

Google has long had a strategy of making two of everything, with multiple, competing products that go after the same user base.

Is that really the example you want to use? Yes, Google duplicates existing products. But no, it hasn't helped Google achieve major success outside its core, decades old businesses of search, Gmail, and Maps. I'm not sure I can name a winner that came out of that strategy. Usually the older product prevails- Gmail over Wave, Google Maps over Google Earth, etc. Sometimes both fail, such as Android Wear vs. Google Glass.

The trouble for Google is that you don't need two publicly released projects to try different two different approaches. You just have to get them far enough along that you can think critically about them and make a hard decision about which one is better. Take out the person making the hard decisions and you're left with a leadership void.

Now what SpaceX is doing is actually much closer to what any regular company does- try multiple things during the R&D phase. They aren't actually going to mass produce two different and incompatible rockets that can't even work with the same payload adapters which would be the Google equivalent.

I hope the Google reference is tongue in cheek, considering how big of a clusterfuck their product line is.

To be fair, Google's problem was never the development of products but an inability to commit to and support a product beyond a few years. Its the corporate version of ADD.

To be fair, once you realize Google actually only has one product (Search), with everything else being hobbies to keep the tekkies fed and happy and creative, decisions regarding investing in non-Search products become much easier...

Two Starships are now under construction, with a hop test scheduled in two weeks.

In other news, Bezos had a PowerPoint presentation about how he could build a lunar lander and O'Neil cylinders.

I have my money on the guy who is actually building and flying things.

Bezos is playing a very different game. Most of his presentation was aimed at someone powerful who wants a legacy in 5 years time. Also note Blue Origins factory siting.

Musk is seeing what can be done and trusting it will be awesome. So far, he's been right.

I hope both are successful.

Yeah, it's interesting to compare the 2 approaches. I think to some extent we are a bit spoiled with SpaceX and the amount of info the company (and Musk) put out there. They're obviously reasonably happy to allow some of their testing and failures to be seen too. They have had to produce results in order to get continued funding, and arguably one of their greatest triumphs is getting paying customers to agree to the company using launches for continued testing and evolution of the Falcon 9.

Blue Origin is almost polar opposite. Apparently almost limitless funding, but playing cards pretty close to their chest. The assumption is that rather than lots of iterative development, they are instead planning very carefully for effectively the final model straight away.

There was a decent sized part of me that was hoping the recent big BO/Bezos reveal was going to be a surprise announcement that New Glenn would be making it's first test flight next Tuesday. I knew it wouldn't be, or at least, it would have to be real Bond villain territory to get an orbital class rocket ready to fly without at least some news leaking out. I still hope they are making good progress though.

They are not A/B testing hardware design. Both sites are building the same design. They are simply using 2 separate fabrication crews to define best practices for fabrication of the rocket body and tanks. It is not a race, the winner will not be determined by who finishes first. As has been stated by EM repeatedly, they will be building Starships at both locations. This method allows them to work out the details of best fabrication techniques, and I'm sure both sites will eventually be using nearly identical processes once they get some experience with what works best.

Also keep in mind that to realize Musk's Mars ambitions requires serious in orbit refuelling and that means having a sizeable fleet and multiple launch sites. In the near term this two site build and fly strategy de-risks program delays from specific site issues (accidents, regulatory road-blocks etc) and helps build towards long term goals of a high fleet construction and launch cadence capability required for Mars.

This reminds me of NASA in the 1960's - actually having definite goals and working aggressively and effectively on many things in parallel to meet them. It is striking how much SpaceX stands out from everyone else in aerospace in looking and acting like they have both purpose and intent.

Given the ambition, I hope the Starship is being built as an airframe only - and then general guidance as to how the internals should be balanced. In the same way that a 747 can be arranged in multiple ways internally but these being barely noticeable externally. We have to commoditise space as much as possible to allow increased flexibility.

Or am I talking incontinent rubbish and entirely missing something?

I think you meant "incoherent rubbish"

oh, no. I know what I typed

Oh yes, it's a perfectly cromulent word. And after all, "when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Often I wish I could be frozen for two or three years so I don't have to wait for all these rockets (New Glenn, BFR, even SLS) to be built. Imagine waking up to an almost deployed Starlink network and videos of all the failed and successful launches! Plus new video game consoles will be out! (Yes, I know this is the plot of a South Park episode!)

I hope the Google reference is tongue in cheek, considering how big of a clusterfuck their product line is.

To be fair, Google's problem was never the development of products but an inability to commit to and support a product beyond a few years. Its the corporate version of ADD.

To be fair, once you realize Google actually only has one product (Search), with everything else being hobbies to keep the tekkies fed and happy and creative, decisions regarding investing in non-Search products become much easier...

You typed search but I think you means advertising. Google is an advertising company. Their search is just a vehicle for their ad business.

If he's adamant about going mass-commercial then Continuity of Operations would require them to have two build sites anyway. Making them both 'A' grade (ie; each with their own design team, each capable of acting independently) is not that much of a step further.

Well they aren't capsules. They are upper stages. Yes someday they may carry humans but that is likely a long way off. The starship will also be used for launching payloads into orbit.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that speed isn't the sole metric. Site A can build one starship per month. Site B can build two a month but 90% of the blow up before making orbit. Lets close down site A and go full speed ahead with Site B

Could also be a lot of other things factoring in...like quality of output, worker skill/turnover (training new people takes time), how hard it is to get parts to the sites and the product to the launchpads. I see a lot of things they could consider.

What is the most amazing prospect is that the first boots on Mars MAY NOT be from a government-run space program.

It may end up being a corporation like SpaceX that gets there first.

I can't think of many sci-fi novels that predicted a corporation may get to Mars BEFORE governments did.

The future may be more Weyland-Yutani that Star Trek.

On the other hand I believe that at some point if/when SpaceX looks to be getting close NASA will pivot and support a SpaceX based human mission to Mars. They will do it simply out of survival. If NASA isn't part of the first crewed mission to Mars well NASA or at least the HSF portion of NASA might as well close up shop.

Google has long had a strategy of making two of everything, with multiple, competing products that go after the same user base.

Is that really the example you want to use? Yes, Google duplicates existing products. But no, it hasn't helped Google achieve major success outside its core, decades old businesses of search, Gmail, and Maps. I'm not sure I can name a winner that came out of that strategy. Usually the older product prevails- Gmail over Wave, Google Maps over Google Earth, etc. Sometimes both fail, such as Android Wear vs. Google Glass.

The trouble for Google is that you don't need two publicly released projects to try different two different approaches. You just have to get them far enough along that you can think critically about them and make a hard decision about which one is better. Take out the person making the hard decisions and you're left with a leadership void.

Now what SpaceX is doing is actually much closer to what any regular company does- try multiple things during the R&D phase. They aren't actually going to mass produce two different and incompatible rockets that can't even work with the same payload adapters which would be the Google equivalent.

A better comparison would be NASA. They famously build two when they have the money for it, it becomes useful in a variety of ways. The 2020 Mars Rover, for example, uses a lot of backup parts originally for Curiousity. This was parodied in movies like Armageddon and Contact. They even hired two of the same genetic human once as astronauts

Blue Origin is almost polar opposite. Apparently almost limitless funding, but playing cards pretty close to their chest. The assumption is that rather than lots of iterative development, they are instead planning very carefully for effectively the final model straight away.

The problem is you can't analyze your way to a perfectly working final configuration vehicle no matter how much effort and time you expend. You have to bend metal and fly and test. It is said that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. In aerospace no paper rocket survives first contact with real life physics.

Blue is going to run into issue and problems it hadn't considered fully and modelled with 100% fidelity and this will cause delays and design and procedure changes. I find Bezo's confidence quite arrogant - we will be able to fly and land even in extreme weather. That is rather tempting fate for a company that hasn't flown any type of rocket into orbit or attempted recovery of the first stage of an orbital capable launcher.

SpaceX's approach is far more pragmatic and effective - build, test, fly, learn, and iterate. The sooner you build, test, fly, and learn the sooner you uncover the hidden issues and get to working solutions. IMO Blue is going to have to learn this the hard way. That is too bad because the new space revolution really needs two or more effective competitors to really get the ball rolling.

SpaceX is having a competition to maximize process improvement in building Starship...

While...Boeing can't put one SLS together.

I spent 90% of my IT career building 3rd/4th generation "traditional" applications. Costly, rigid, single-threaded development life-cycle projects. Then, I moved into RAD and started managing millenials. Everything changed and I get it. Not many of my generation do.

WHEN DONE CORRECTLY, agile development, be it software or hardware is a quantum leap forward.